


Vivid Sky

by AgentMal



Category: Real Person Fiction
Genre: Ancestral Plane, i don't know what this is, this is just me processing death and loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMal/pseuds/AgentMal
Summary: I stayed up all night, reading reactions to the news, being in my own reaction, seeing pictures and tributes, and at some point I wrote this. Written in love and respect for an amazing actor and wonderful human. Wherever you are, I wish you easy rest.Rest in Power.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Vivid Sky

A white space, a crossing space. A barren, cold, static void of callous brightness.

Just behind is the fading hardness of all that had come before, the hardness that had increasingly become even sharper and harder. The hardness of everything endured. Ahead appears a figure — no, two. They step forward, and even while everything else about them is indistinct, their faces are infinitely gentle, open, and kind.

The figures, both feline, become clearer and more solid with every step they take. One has silky black fur, the other has the sandy coat of a lioness. The lioness reaches out and takes one of the hands that had been reaching forward. In being taken up, the hand resolves from mist to solidness, and with it the man it belongs to. His face is less gaunt than it had been that morning, his eyes unringed, his expression at ease. As he stands before them, his limbs fill in even more, his back straightens, his shoulders draw back, unburdened at last by all the weight they had carried. The lioness — the healer — does not release his hand. The other — the warrior — eyes him approvingly, smirking proprietarily, and takes his other hand. 

They lovingly take a step back, drawing him, and as he goes forward the space resolves around him. Or perhaps he steps through it into somewhere new. The world gentles, darkens, details emerging with every step. Beneath his bare feet, instead of white nothing, are plush grasses and soft earth. The horizon stretches further and further as detail clarifies around him - a vast grassy plain in the glowing shadow of twilight, studded with the occasional silhouettes of trees.

Under a deep, velvety black sky, jeweled with glittering stars and crisscrossed in purple and blue ribbons of aurora, Sekhmet and Bast finally release his hands. Where before he had been at ease, now he’s staring in awe, irrepressibly starting to smile.

“Welcome,” they say. 

He beams, exulting in joy and gratitude. 

They smile fondly back. 

One gestures to the tree closest to them, a little ways off, where shadowy feline figures are perched or lounging in the branches. At least one is stretching to possibly jump down and meander over.

“There are others here already, who have awaited your arrival.”

The other gestures to more distant trees, “Still others, your forebearers, have been looking forward to seeing you.” 

The first raises a hand to indicate the stars above, “and even more distant ancestors and antecedents that may meet you in time.”

And suddenly he finds he knows who every one of them are: every star, ever figure in the trees or — he can see so clearly now, more clearly than was ever possible before — any distance away on the plain. 

The two point out still other features to him across the vast plains, at increasingly spectacular distances, and he can see each with total clarity. And the air is sweeter somehow, and invigorating, and he feels a perfect lack of difficulty as he takes a full breath.

“What would you like to do first?”

He bounces a little, the word “first” unlocking a new, glorious joy: that there is truly no need to rush, no need to prioritize, no limit — finally — on time. The choice of what to do first is not a choice of what else he might not be able to do, only what will happen a little later on. 

And he feels energized, light, exuberant, bouncing on legs that, like the rest of him, are now strong and powerful and whole. And suddenly his feet flex in the grass and he wants to exert himself, express this bursting freedom. He takes in the shadow-silvered hues of the green veldt opening before him, then answers, radiant.

“Run.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am a Christian, and Chadwick Boseman is a Christian. I usually don't have strong feelings about the afterlife, but in the small hours the night he passed, it felt like the Divine permitted me an awareness. It conveyed to me that Jesus had reached out to Chadwick Boseman, wrapped him in His arms, and brought him home. I genuinely believe it. I wanted to share that feeling with others, and the result was what you see. I generally keep my faith to myself, which is part of why I abstracted the piece away from being explicitly Christian, but it didn't seem complete and fully respectful without this annotation in acknowledgement.


End file.
